A report has determined that selfish adults are responsible for damaged childhood.
The aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children, a major independent report on childhood says.
Oh? Really?
Family break-up, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education and income inequality are mentioned as big contributing factors
Look, parents can counter aggressive advertising. Mine did, my sisters do and it is an introduction to the real world for children. Oh and “inequality” for crying out loud. Inequality is a fact of life – that too is something the sprogs will have to deal with when they enter the adult world.
The report, called The Good Childhood Inquiry and commissioned by the Children’s Society, concludes that children’s lives in Britain have become “more difficult than in the past”, adding that “more young people are anxious and troubled”.
And?
According to the panel, “excessive individualism” is to blame for many of the problems children face and needs to be replaced by a value system where people seek satisfaction more from helping others rather than pursuing private advantage.
Excessive individualism… Oh, dear, that sounds just like something the truly egregious Blunkett would have said – and equally noxious. We can’t have the little darling becoming individuals, can we? oh, no, that wouldn’t do at all.
And the Children’s Society?
Well, with grants from the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government, it looks suspiciously like a fake charity – and toeing the government line on individualism, I’m almost inclined to suggest that they would say that, wouldn’t they? After all, we can’t have future drones growing up as individuals and challenging their masters, can we?
How may more of these naff reports will these “expert” groups produce?
Coming hard on the heels of the absurd Northern Ireland “Give ’em all £12,000” effort, this indicates that producing portentous reports full of rubbish us an occupational disease.
All these reports cost the taxpayer money, as that’s where the bulk of the money comes from to run these ‘report’ producing organisations.
Cull these pseudo-charities, save the tax and maybe we could spend more time at home with the kiddy-winks.
I didn’t notice a lot of anxiety from the over-exuberant yobs throwing snowballs at passing cars and passing shoppers in a local high street yesterday, although I did notice lots of potential for trouble!
I teach students at a grammar school, many of whose parents are high-achieving and hard-working. Their sons are equitable, pleasant, motivated individuals themselves, and it has everything to do with the basically decent values and good parenting that such “pursuers of personal success” seem to want to inculcate in tehir offspring. I wonder what the parents of the snowball throwing fraternity I saw yesterday do?